RDA in Finland

Marja-Liisa SeppäläNational Library of Finland

May 23, 2016RDA in the Baltic & Eastern Europe

The Finnish RDA

• The Finnish translation of RDA was published at the beginning of 2016 in theRDA Toolkit.• It took 4 years to translate and 8 months to copy the text to the RDA Toolkit.• The Finnish RDA is based on the version April 2015.

• The Finnish policy statements (the grey icon with the initials SKL) werepublished in April (2016) in the RDA Toolkit.

• The national RDA guide will be published in September 2016.• Give more explanations than the policy statements which are kept short.

RDA implementation

• At the beginning of 2016 about 40 Finnish libraries implemented RDA.• All the university libraries, a few special libraries and a couple of public libraries

• Any library willing to start cataloguing in the national union catalogue Melindahas to implement RDA.• Melinda aims to include most of the Finnish libraries in the next few years.

• The implementation does not change• Cataloguing process• Datamodel, as long as the ILS (of Melinda) is Aleph/Voyager• User interface, as long as the format/datamodel is MARC 21 (in Melinda)

Training

• RDA training 2015 consisted of• 3 modules and 3 all-day sessions:

1) general and backround information 2) attributes and relationships 3) examples inMARC 21 format

• Slide shows, no hands-on training

• RDA training in 2016:• 6 one-hours’ webinar on different areas of RDA, e.g. Changes in names and titles,

Relationships, Music cataloguing and Cataloguing of audio-visual resources• The online sessios are recorded: the recordings and the slide shows on the training web

page• No face-to-face training

Guidance

• The national library organizes 6 ”question hours” (on the web) this year:• C. 200 participants (catalogers) and c. 20 questions each time• The online sessios are recorded: the recordings and the slide shows on the training web

page• The frequantly asks questions:

• Choosing the creator of a work and creating the authorized access point for a work• Special issues in music cataloguing• Elements in a publication statement• Dissertation information• RDA conversion

Special Finnish issues

• The Finnish language is problematic in some chapters: e.g.• In chapters A.2.6 and A.3.2: The capitalization of the first word of each term is against the

capitalization rules of the Finnish.• In chapters 6.29.1.18-6.29.1.20: The Anglo-American legal system differs from the Finnish

one. The RDA instructions for legal resources cannot be applied in Finland.

• The music issues:• Long national traditions hard to break -> Some suggestions will be made to the RSC

music working group about discussion papers / proposals in the near future.• Two proposals already accepted by RSC: e.g.

• Alternative to 6.14.2.5.2.2 about singular and plural forms of types of composition• Alternative to 6.14.2.7.1.3 about recording number of a music part

Library network

• National Library of Finland (NLF) is responsible for the RDA implementation• Cataloguing stardard service

• General RDA guidance• Takes care of updates of the Finnish RDA text

• Metadata vocabulary• Includes RDA and ISBD terms and phrases for metadata elements• References to RDA registry and Open Metadata Registry

• National bibliography• Records as examples of RDA cataloguing

• No extra resources (human or other) for the RDA implementation or co-ordination• The national library needs help of the library network.

Library network (2)

• Several active national working groups of the library network• Committee for cataloguing standards:

• Theoretical approach• Focus on rules and models

• Working group for cataloguing practices:• Practical approach• Focus on formats and examples

• Working groups for special areas of cataloguing

• NLF coordinates the working groups.• Members from every library sector and from NLF

Committee forCataloguingStandards

Working Groupfor Cataloguing

Practices

FinnishLibrariesWG for

MusicCataloguing

WG forSubject

Headings

WG forName

Authorities

International changes in cataloguing

Co-operation between library, archive and museum sectors

• Starting point was the shared user interface Finna (https://finna.fi):• A user interface needs aligned metadata.• RDA was chosen to one of the recommended standards for the Finnish memory

organizations (libraries, museums and archives).

• Comparison of the concept models of the memory organizations:• Easiest to start alignment with agent (person, family and corporate body) metadata

• Archive and museum sectors decided to start using RDA: i.e.• Chapters 8-11: attributes of person, family and corporate body• Chapters 29-32: relationships between person, family and corporate body• Appendix K: relationship designators for person, family and corporate body

Database for the agent metadata

• Planning of a shared data repository for agent metadata of the memoryorganizations• The aim is to prevent any overlap in cataloguing.

• Creating of a RDA based datamodel for agent metadata• Includes all the RDA elements, elements of the ISNI standard and of EU Core Vocabulary

• The main issues• Difference in defining an agent• Choosing the preferred name of agent• Authorized access points

Further planning needed

• Other issues with the agent database• The strict regulations on privacy protection in Finland• The application architecture: The weakest link are old and closed ILSs of the library

sector.• Workflows, metadata exchange etc. still need further planning.

• More about the project at the IFLA satellite meeting ”RDA in wider world”August 11, 2016

Thank you!

marja-liisa.seppala(at)helsinki.fi

Cataloguing standard service of NLF:https://www.kiwi.fi/display/Kuvailusaantopalvelu/In+English